


taking back the chance to feel alive

by wariangle



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 21:16:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2203368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wariangle/pseuds/wariangle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stumbles out of Defiance, a patchwork creature dressed in a dead girl's skin with someone else's memories rattling around in her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	taking back the chance to feel alive

**Author's Note:**

> most of this was written before "bottom of the world" and "doll parts." basically I wanted to give indogene-kenya somewhat of a happy ending.

** I.  ** _am I just your creation?_ ****

She stumbles out of Defiance, a patchwork creature dressed in a dead girl's skin with someone else's memories rattling around in her head. She is breaking apart at the seams, failing to encompass the identity, the being, of Kenya Rosewater, a specter haunting a deserted name and face. Caught in the horror of existing in this non-existence, she flees without a backward glance.

These days, the world is a freakshow, torn apart and patched jaggedly together, alien technology rushing in to fill the holes appearing as the Earth was ripped asunder. Defiance was supposed to be an escape from all that, a place where humans and Votans could meet not in a collision, but in understanding. It, too, was a place with rough edges, but it had been a work in progress, a beacon of hope, a new start. They had passed through war and strife to get there, the small, teetering town in the middle of nowhere, but with Amanda by her side it had seemed a haven, a shot at happiness. A place to build a future.

She grits her teeth at the memories, the way they invade her alien mind and fills it with shreds of artificial humanity. She is not Kenya. Kenya was a woman of warmth and kindness, a survivor against impossible odds, a loving sister.

She, whatever she is, is something else, something that carries silver beneath her human facade, that can crack bone as easily as twigs; something that Amanda Rosewater has bled into and merged with. There are too many layers - Kenya, Amanda, newly created memories upon implanted ones. She fears that beneath it all, where who she really is should be, there is nothing but a void.

  
  


AngelArc is where she ends up. It is a place where even something like her can hide, where one more freak will not be noticed. Just another monster partaking in this dance macabre at the end of the world.

She does not know where the parts of her body that are human end and where Indogene flesh begins, but she knows that she needs to eat and sleep, and that her survival instincts keep her from laying down to die ahead of time.

She has enough money to rent a room and it is a simple thing to get more. For Kenya, prostitution was her trade, a job that she built something out of. For her, it is a means of scraping by in order to get food in her belly and to avoid sleeping in the streets. And, unlike Kenya, what she's selling isn't actually hers.

She turns away a man that causes something unpleasant to slither down her spine, wondering what he would have triggered in Kenya. There are so many gaps in her memory, surrounded by sharp edges that she has no way of knowing how to wear down. For some reason, pomegranate juice brings a smile to her lips while the act of drawing glittering streaks of eyeliner along the upper lid of her eyes in front of the mirror instills a vague sense of sadness in her.

She wears Kenya's emotions like an ill-fitting dress, masking herself human in the eyes of the world.

A Castithan woman buys her services one night and as the woman kisses her and lets hesitant hands caress the kimono off her shoulders, tears gather beneath her lowered eyelids. Occasionally, she imagines a scent of expensive perfume in the air and it evokes something inside of her that she cannot name.

  
  


Jade, she has been nick-named by the patrons of the bar she works out of, from the color of Kenya's eyes, and it is not a name she calls her own, but it is one to give when people ask for it. She chokes on _Kenya_ , because it is does not really belong to her. The face she bears she can do nothing about, but she can swallow down the name of a dead girl, let some part of her rest in peace.

Time passes, each day another grain of sand falling through the hourglass counting down to the end of her existence.

Occasionally when walking through the streets of AngelArc she catches a flash of Kenya's life in the people passing by: a blonde woman with her hair in a braid reminds her of Amanda, a rugged, bearded man makes her recall Nolan and the sensation of a Castithan woman brushing up against her in the marketplace fills her with sudden, unexplainable longing.

“ _All those times that I gave you shtako, you should have hit me back with this at any time. You could have shut me down. Why didn't you?”_

“ _Because you are my sister_.”

“ _Was there something between us?”_

“ _You could say that, yes.”_

She pushes it all away, wishing the memories would be eaten by the black holes in her brain and leave her a blank slate. It is futile: every morning when she wakes up her thoughts and memories seem more jumbled, more insistent with the way they crowd her head.

The mirror reflects back a woman she cannot recognize as herself as she sits in front of it, picking at the rift in the skin at her temple, wondering what would happen to her if she just ripped it all loose, stepped out of the shell of Kenya Rosewater's body. But from such hideous a chrysalis nothing but more horror could possibly emerge, she thinks.

With trembling hands she covers up the hole in her mask with foundation and her hair before slathering her eyes with black and her lips with bruise-colored purple.

  
  


**II.** _a thousand voices speak like a memory, bits and pieces, sound like a melody_

She is constantly ready to run on, should the circumstances require it. But as the scent of Casti perfume fills her nostrils, invoking that bittersweet sense of déjà vu, she does not flee. Instead, she freezes in place, assaulted by a barrage of emotions she cannot even begin to untangle.

“Kenya?” That name, spoken with that sensuous voice, hits her hard, brings forth a memory she did not know she had, of silk sheet beneath her back and eager hands tracing poetry across her skin. Kenya's skin.

It is enough to make her hesitate, to pin her in place, as Stahma walks up to the bar where she stands. She is one, two steps away from her but even so she feels trapped.

“How did you find me?” she asks, the words cutting through the air like an accusation.

“I have a vast network of sources,” is what Stahma offers in reply. Her lovely eyes are a little too wide, fastened on her face as if she is afraid she will disappear into thin air if she blinks. She will, soon. Stahma takes a sharp breath and then she all but blurts, “I have missed you.”

She twists her head away, the fingers of her right hand curling into a fist. She is not Kenya.

“Kenya is dead,” she says.

“I know,” Stahma says.

“Just... go,” she says and tries to brush past Stahma, but she takes her wrist gently, the silk of her gloves cool against her thundering pulse.

“Please,” Stahma says and against better judgment she leads her to a table in the far back and sits down in front of her.

“I was prepared,” she begins before Stahma as a chance to say anything. “I expected Amanda to walk in that door any day and I was prepared for what I would do. I did not expect you.”

“Amanda has been... conflicted,” Stahma says. “She made an attempt to let you go, so her search began after mine.”

“What were you to her?” she asks abruptly, meaning Kenya, not Amanda.

“I only want what is best for you,” Stahma says.

She bites her lip and turns away from Stahma, shaking her head. She was manufactured to be a ploy in Pottinger's sick little game, but people keep smearing meaning unto her, forcing her into the gap Kenya's demise has left.

“Don't,” she says.

She had supposed that Stahma had been one of Kenya's clients, or perhaps a friend, or both, but Stahma's restless hands and searching eyes reveals that there might have been more. Usually Stahma cloaks herself with regal indifference, allowing people to see just what she wants them to see - she has never appeared this out of sorts before. _Kenya_ has never seen her this out of sorts before.

It is confusing, the things her brain insists she knows and is, things that never happened to her at all. Things that have no bearing on her. Not really.

“I miss you,” Stahma whispers, a confession, a slip of the tongue.

She rises from her chair. She's had enough.

“Please...” Stahma says again, reaching one, graceful hand out for her.

“I'm working,” she says sharply. “Either pay for the pleasure of my company, or get out.”

She is sure that Stahma will lower her eyes in that way she does and leave, but instead she surprises her by bringing out a wad of scrip, counting out too many bills on the table.

There is nothing she can do but accept the money and lead Stahma to her place above the bar. They climb the stairs silently and her fingers tremble as she unlocks the door, swings it open to let Stahma step inside. The impeccably white hem of Stahma's dress catches dust off the floor - she is an anomaly in her apartment, a piece that do not fit in the life she has here.

Stahma turns to look at her, her eyes seemingly iridescent in the dusk, and she has the sudden urge to push and shove just to see her carefully constructed control shattered. She wants to see Stahma flinch and flee; she wants to make the monster beneath her skin apparent to her.

She kisses her, hard enough to bruise, but Stahma just delves into it, desperately, and that just sickens her, makes her pull away.

“Undress,” she orders Stahma while her own fingers are already plucking at the laces of her belt, untying it with practiced movements.

Stahma does not hesitate at her command. She is achingly beautiful - the sharpest cold of winter made incarnate, spun into the shape of a woman.

She ignores the recognition that tugs at the edges of the constellation of gaps in her mind and kisses Stahma again. She refuses to let her body fit itself against Stahma, keeping herself rigid against her as her lavish scent inflames her senses against her will.

She is not made for wanting. The girl whose desire she feels is dead in the ground.

The sound Stahma lets out as she drags her fingers up the smoothness of her thigh and against her wet cunt is one she wants to save, encapsulate. Bracing against the unwelcome wave of tenderness that sweeps through her, she pushes Stahma down to sitting and straddles her lap, mouth seeking out hers for another punishing kiss.

Climbing off Stahma's lap, she says, “I want you to fuck me.” Without waiting for a reply, she takes a dildo and lube off her nightstand and opens Stahma's thighs by pushing her knee between them.

Stahma remains still as the dildo is positioned inside of her, but her eyes flutter and her mouth falls open as her lube-coated hand forms a fist around it. Votan technology. Probably Indogene - she might as well just fuck herself.

She straddles Stahma's lap anew and grabs the dildo with one hand, sinking down slowly and stilling when she is firmly seated. Stahma stares up at her, their short, panting breaths mingling between them, Stahma's fingers hesitantly creeping up to close around her waist.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” she says quietly, gazing mercilessly into Stahma's translucent eyes.

The rough moan that rips its way out of her throat at the way Stahma thrusts up against her is gently swallowed by Stahma's mouth and her fingers flexes against her shoulders, her hips shoving back just as hard.

It is a harrowing experience, fucking someone who knows her body better than she herself does.

  
  


Stahma leaves behind her scent in her sheets and the the memory of her touch upon her skin. It resonates with her like an echo, leaving her mind splintered from memories she should not - could not - have. On her tongue is the taste of tea she cannot recall drinking.

She is a mirage. Unreal, and bound to fade away.

Sometimes, on the verge of feeling asleep, pine trees swim before her vision, tall and looming. There is cold metal like ice against her palm and a sensation like lead in her veins.

  
  


By the time Amanda finds her, she has lost the urge to run. Her life is ticking away, her clockwork heart quickly winding down.

When Amanda throws her arms around her and presses her too hard to her chest, all she can do is fold herself up against her, unable to resist the feeling of safety that her stolen memories promises she'll find within Amanda's embrace.

“I've talked to Doc Yewll,” is, naturally, the first thing Amanda says. “She knows someone who can help you.”

Someone to lay her bare, cut her open, and wind her back up.

“I am not Kenya,” she tells Amanda. It comes out as a warning. “I am not your sister.”

Amanda is still wearing a cast around her wrist.

She remembers when, during the war, she had damaged her ankle badly and Amanda had braved the enemy lines to bring her an Indogene doctor and ensure her good care.

She remembers Amanda letting her squeeze her hand as hard as she wanted as the alien surgeons cut into her leg.

She remembers and endless trek through a world laid to waste from war and destruction, Amanda always at her side.

With every molecule of her being, she remembers. She knows the weight of Amanda's hand in hers, the warmth of her body curled up tightly to hers to ward of the chill of the cold wilderness surrounding them.

Retroactively, her artificial flesh molds itself to her mind, her memories.

“I don't care,” Amanda says, her stone-hard conviction apparent in her words, in the set of her shoulders and in her steely eyes.

  
  


**III.** _I mimic in my search for m_ e

She slips under to blinding blue light glaring into her eyes and is re-knitted, remade, retrofitted in darkness. During her rebirth, she dreams in vivid chiaroscuro and meets her death.

She wakes to Amanda's smile and knows that the surgery, the procedure, whatever it was, worked. She is properly wound up, outfitted with a human life span.

With hesitation and reticence, she lets Amanda convince her to return to Defiance. It calls to her - it is a beacon in the night, promising her a safe haven. A home.

“Kenya,” people greet her in the streets, in the bar at the NeedWant, in the marketplace, and she lets them, lets Defiance fill in some of the blanks in her identity. She refuses to let Amanda give the NeedWant to her, though - refuses to try and fail to fill the Kenya-shaped hole in the town and the lives of its people, like a discarded puzzle piece that might just fit if it is just wrought into shape by force.

Once upon a time, she (Kenya) came to Defiance in search of a new beginning. Perhaps it can offer her a second one as well.

“Kenya,” Stahma greets her in her unmistakable voice as she steps into the NeedWant a week after her return and she lets her. Kenya. A tribute to a dead girl.

She has been helping Amanda in the bar and without being prompted she takes a class and fills it with silvery wine.

Stahma thanks her with a smile and a small bow of her head. Her graceful fingers curl around the stem of her glass, lifting it to her lips.

“You killed her,” Kenya says and Stahma freezes, her smile melting away like frost in the morning sun. The liquid glimmers in the dim light, revealing the slight trembling of her fingers.

“You...”

“I don't know how, but I remember,” Kenya says, her fury making her bold. “The poison was on the flask.”

“Kenya...”

“ _Shtako_ to your Casti honor,” Kenya spits. “Fucking around is an unpardonable crime, but murder is acceptable? Is that why you are here - finishing up the job?”

Stahma reaches her hand out for Kenya's, but Kenya jerks hers away. “I thought it better you'd die by my hand,” she says quietly. “Datak...”

Kenya interrupts her again. “You know, when I saw you in the marketplace, the sight of you was... It lit me up inside.” She shakes her head. “Then you came and found me. And all along, you were the one that killed her. You are the reason they made me into this... this _thing_!”

They are drawing glances and Stahma is ducking her head with a deprecating smile on her lips, but Kenya barely even notices.

“She loved you,” she says mercilessly, hoping that the knowledge will get under Stahma's skin, the way the poison seeped in through Kenya's fingertips, and do her some damage.

Stahma's lips part, but she says nothing.

“Why did you come here?” Kenya asks, a veil of sudden tears blurring her vision. “So that we could be monsters together?”

The sound of glass touching wood is loud in the silent bar as Stahma puts her drink down and leaves, something almost like defeat settled in the slouch of her shoulders.

  
  


“You do know that we could leave,” Amanda says as she pulls up her covers over them both in her bed. “Get away from here - just go anywhere. Find ourselves a bar, have a drink, and take over whatever town we happen to be in.”

Kenya smiles at the memory of the first time they did precisely that, but wonders what it used to look like, when it was Kenya's rather than Amanda's. “I'm good here,” she says, sighing as Amanda's fingers start massaging her scalp. “Am I not the purpose of Defiance made flesh?” It is not an easy joke to make, but she makes it anyway. “Votan and human coming together.”

“Mhm,” Amanda says. Her voice is so achingly familiar and in the darkness it is easy to imagine that everything is has it has always been. “We should put up a statue of you in the marketplace.”

“That would be much easier to accomplish if you were mayor again,” Kenya says, not too subtly and Amanda laughs.

“I _am_ exceptionally good at being the boss,” she agrees, and Kenya nudges an elbow into her ribs, making her laugh again. Amanda shifts a little, pushing Kenya up closer against her side. “Let's just take tomorrow as it comes, shall we?”

Kenya nods and takes her sister's free hand in hers. “Don't steal the covers,” she says.

“No promises,” Amanda replies.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://wariangle.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
